I’ve been asked to participate in a reading tomorrow, the 14th. It’s for the Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Reading series, at the Happy Ending Lounge on 302 Broome Street, at the intersection of Broome Street and Forsyth Streets.
Before going into details, I have to say I love the (I think) unintended pun on the Citysearch site, which calls the lounge the best new bar in the city, etc:
“Happy Ending’s former life was an erotic massage parlor and has now been transformed into a club with two floors, each with its own feel.”
From the publicity for the series:
We are very pleased to invite you and yours to the newest incarnation of the Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood reading series, beginning this Valentine’s Day (Thursday, Feb. 14) and continuing the second Thursday of every month at 8:00 pm. The location is Happy Ending.
Author and Open City Founding Editor Thomas Beller founded the Webby Award-nominated Web site mrbellersneighborhood.com in 2000. The site publishes stories about New York City life that follow in the tradition of Joseph Mitchell and E.B. White—slices of life, portraits of memorable characters, scandalous encounters with public decadence and heartwarming displays of civil courage.
Readers on February 14th are Laren Stover, Nora Maynard, and Meakin Armstrong. The host is Patrick Gallagher. The reading begins at 8:00 pm.
Nora Maynard’s work has appeared in The Rambler, CHOW, Apartment Therapy, and other publications. She has received fiction fellowships from the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, and Blue Mountain Center. In 2007 the Bronx Writers’ Center/Bronx Council on the Arts awarded her the Chapter One prize for an excerpt from her novel-in-progress, Burnt Hill Road.
Laren Stover’s first novel Pluto, Animal Lover was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. She has written for The New York Observer, The New York Times, Bergdorf Goodman Magazine, Deutsche Vogue, and Bomb.
Meakin Armstrong is a screenwriter, magazine editor, and freelance writer working on his first novel, Kings of the Wild Frontier. Among the awards and grants he received is a “waitership” to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2007. He is also contributor to the book, New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg (Dist U of Chicago Press, 2007) and is the fiction editor for Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics (guernicamag.com).
Happy Ending is located at 302 Broome Street, at the intersection of Broome Street and Forsyth Street. The phone number is 212-334-9676
